


says the wolf to the spider (promise me forever)

by Areiton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassin Peter Parker, BAMF Peter Parker, Child Peter Parker, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra Peter Parker, Kidnapped Peter Parker, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Slash, Protective Bucky, Red Room (Marvel), The Winter Soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 12:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19701598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: “Be strong, little spider,” he whispers. “Whatever they do. Be strong.”





	says the wolf to the spider (promise me forever)

**Author's Note:**

> Full warnings at the end.

The mission is simple. 

Kill and extract the package, return to base. 

No survivors. 

No witnesses. 

The mission is simple--he kills them while they’re sleeping, Richard and Mary Parker. Two neat bullet holes in the middle of the foreheads. 

Extraction is simple. He takes the harddrive, takes the laptops, takes the spiral bound notebooks. 

It’s as he’s setting the bomb--no witnesses, no survivors, no trace left behind--that he sees the photo. 

A child. Small, with bright eyes and a chipped tooth in his smile. 

He reminds the Asset of...something. 

For a long moment, he ponders. 

~*~ 

The mission is simple. 

Until it’s not. 

~*~ 

He kills three guards when they try to take the sleeping toddler from him, and pulls a gun when the handler starts reciting words that makes his brain ache. 

They shove him and the boy in a cold cell and leave to regroup, and the Asset hums, contentedly, curling in a corner with the boy in his lap. 

~*~ 

There was a boy--a different boy--whose breath rattled and chased fear down someone’s spine, and they protected him. 

They would die for him. 

The Asset watches his sleeping boy and wonders why that matters. 

Dying for someone does them no good. 

He touches the pale cheek and says, “ _Я тебя убью, малыш._ ” 

~*~ 

They let the Asset keep him. He wonders about it. Wonders why. 

Then they take him, wipe him, and he forgets to wonder about anything. 

~*~ 

There is a boy in the base, when they wake him. 

He hears his screams, sees him once, a flash of too wide eyes and pale skin, a shock of recognition that licks through him like a malfunction before he’s pushed out the door and into a black vehicle, a gun put in his hand. 

The mission is simple. 

All of them are. 

~*~ 

The Asset listens. The guards, his handlers, they all talk, when he is being transported, when he’s in his chair for maintenance and repair. They talk while they feed and wash him, while they put him through tests to gauge his usefulness. 

Sometimes he stands at attention for hours while his handler reads on their computer and mutters and talks. 

It doesn’t matter that they talk, that he listens. 

It doesn’t matter that he knows this: the boy is called Spider. He is enhanced, mutated, a product of scientific testing the government banned. He is virtually indestructible, but easily trained with pain, obedient and pliant and will be shaped into the perfect tool for Hydra. 

It doesn’t matter that he knows this: the boy weeps, still, every night, for a family that will never come for him, that he screams himself awake every night. That his feet are always cold and his ribs are always bruised and he shakes when the guards come too close, pulls in tight, around himself, and whispers, too soft to be heard. 

It doesn’t matter that he knows this--because they put him in the chair, and the pain is all he knows and then--then he knows nothing. 

~*~ 

He is in a room, waiting for his orders, when the guards bring in a boy. The Asset studies him: thin, with bruises on his skin, deep sunken eyes, bony wrists and ankles. Easy to snap his bones, easy to kill. 

Three guards surround him--the Asset studies him again, curious. 

“You will train him,” his handler says, and the Asset blinks. 

He is a weapon. A killer. A starburst disjointed images--a thin whey faced golden haired boy with sunken eyes, a laughing smile child between two dead bodies, a bloody metal hand curved around a cascade of burnished copper curls.

He doesn’t understand the starburst of color and feelings, but they feel important, and he tucks them away and watches his new boy. 

~*~ 

He is thin and the Asset feeds him his food, until his boy is lean and strong. 

He is bruised and the Asset is gentle in their sparring, until his skin is milky pale and clear and his blows come bullet quick and deadly strong. 

He has deep sunken eyes, and the Asset sits next to him, starburst memories flickering while the boy curls against his thigh and dreams and when he whimpers in his sleep, the Asset soothes the terrified noises with long forgotten lullabies. 

He is easy to kill, easy to snap and break--and the Asset makes him strong, teaches him to be unbreakable, teaches him how to be a weapon. 

~*~ 

The boy is called Spider and he teaches the Asset. 

It is confusing terrifying wonderful and the Asset lives in fear of the day they will make this memory vanish. 

~*~ 

“My mama is gonna find me,” he whispers, so soft that it’s barely a breath and the Asset hears him, let’s the words wrap around him. “My mama is gonna find us both, and you’ll come home with me.” 

The Asset pet’s his boy’s hair because he loves his belief, and because it is harmless--the boy never speaks when the guards and handlers are close. 

“We’ll have a big bed and it’ll never be cold,” Spider says, sleepily, “and there’ll be food for  _ both _ of us, an’ we can build toys.” 

The Asset makes a humming noise, quietly inquisitive, and Spider makes a noise, a little disgruntled. “Had buildy toys. Don’t--don’t remember what they’re called.” 

Spider squeaks in protest when the arm around his tightens and the Asset fights down fury and fear as starburst memories--cold and pain and the Chair and his cryotube waiting like a coffin and his  _ Spider  _ thrashing against the glass and--

“Legos!” Spider crows, pleased. “They were Legos.” 

~*~ 

The Handler’s are angry. It has been six months and four days since the Asset began training the Spider. They watch--the guards and handlers, and sometimes, people he doesn’t know, people he thinks he should be afraid of. He wants to shield Spider from them. Instead he trains the boy harder, pushes him to be better, because the Spider will survive, if he is a useful weapon. 

They’re angry though. 

He listens while the Handler rants. Spider is a mutant, genetically enhanced by the scientist father Hydra executed. He should be  _ better _ than he is. The Asset feels a protest trapped behind his teeth--the Spider is perfect, perfect just as he is, better than him, better than any of them. 

“He cares for the Soldat,” the Handlers decide. 

Dread trickles down his spine. “Tomorrow then,” they decree, and take him back to the little cell where Spider is waiting, anxious. 

~*~ 

“Be strong, little spider,” he whispers. “Whatever they do. Be strong.” 

Spider watches him with wide, wide eyes and squeezes his hand and the Asset hums into his hair, so quiet it is almost soundless, a nameless lullaby that makes his boy go limp and tired against him on their thin cot. 

“Mama will come,” Spider whispers, a familiar promise. “We won’t always be here.” 

The Asset promises, silent and for the first time--Spider won’t. Spider will be  _ free.  _

_ ~*~  _

Spider cries. 

That, The Asset thinks, is the worst part. Not the electricity they pump through him or the icy water they plunge him into until his lungs are burning. Not the words that rattle through him and make his breath tight and panicked and Spider flickers like a mirage. 

Not the beating or the knives or even the gun. 

It’s his boy, his Spider, standing there like a tiny soldier, tears silently tracking down his cheeks, his big eyes swimming with guilt and grief and the Asset unable to do anything to stop it. 

They torture him for hours, until time loses all meaning, and Spider has slumped to the hard ground and screamed alongside him, until he goes limp and let’s the black take him and is grateful for it. 

Spider never breaks. 

~*~ 

Fourteen hours a day. Five days. Torture that makes starburst memories explode behind his eyes, makes a name crawl up his throat and shatter against his clenched teeth. Fourteen hours a day. Five days. 

In the end, it takes two sentences. 

“Wipe the Asset. Send the Spider to the Red Room.” 

And they both shatter. 

~*~ 

Spider is quiet, that night. 

He sits curled against the Asset, and it doesn't feel quite the same--the boy is growing, he notes, pleased. "I'm scared," he says. 

The Asset hums, thoughtful. "Do this--and you will stay with me. Compliance comes with rewards." 

"But you said," Spider protests, his voice sharp and young and petulant. 

"The mission has changed, little spider," he says, and Spider looks at him, a spark of interest bright in his big eyes. 

"Why?" 

"Because if they take you from me," he says slowly. He doesn't know how he knows this, where the fear and surety are coming from. "They will take you from me. And I won't remember you." 

Spider's eyes widen, and he sees in them, what he so rarely sees. What he has trained his boy to hide, to suppress, to not feel. 

Fear. Raw terror in the bright brown, in the clench of his fingers on the Asset's arm, in the way his breathing goes raspy and short. 

"You have to comply. We both do," the Asset whispers. "To stay together, we comply." 

His boy shudders and presses closer to him, and the Asset hums, that familiar melody, the words forever out of reach, until Spider's shaking stops and he leans warm and sleepy against the Asset's side, half in his lap. 

"What is the mission?" he mumbles and the Asset's hand tightens on the boy. 

"Survive." 

It feels incomplete. Like a mission not quite wrapped up. He frowns, and the boy huffs against him, and he sighs. It is enough. 

For now. It is enough. 

Later. When Spider is snoring softly, and the noise in the corridor has died down to nothing and he is utterly alone--the Asset weeps. 

For himself. For five days of torture and pain. For his boy, sweet and gentle and warm in his arms, being shaped into something deadly. 

For a mission he doesn't know how to complete. 

He cries. 

~*~ 

"Promise me, Soldat. Promise me you won't leave me," Spider whispers. It's cold and they curl together, close like puppies, for warmth.

He can hear the guards talking, the Handlers, making plans. He wants to promise. Wants to swear to his boy that he will never leave his side--he can't . He does anyway. 

"I will always come back to you," he says, softly. 

Spider is silent against him, presses close and clings to it. 

"One day," he whispers, "Mama will come. She'll take us both from here. We'll be free." 

The Asset wonders, what freedom is. If they can ever be free, or if they will always be wrapped in each other. 

~*~ 

Spider blossoms, under the Asset's training and quiet whispered words in the middle of the night. He is everything the Handler's want, and more--stronger, quicker to heal, nimble. He shoots sticky webs and swings from the ground into the trees and the rafters of their training room. 

He clings to the ceiling, deftly avoids bullets the guards shoot at him--he's everything Hydra ever wanted. 

The perfect weapon. 

"Soldat," the Handler says. "You have a mission." 

~*~ 

They go with one guard for a mission assist. Spider trembles at his side, and the Asset doesn't know if it's nerves or excitement. He snarls at the guard when he tries to kit the Spider out, takes the weapons and carefully buckles them on, slides them into sheaths and holsters, tugs his tac gear in place so all that is visible of the boy is his tumbling curls, his pink mouth curved into a frown above black goggles. 

"What is the mission?" he asks, voice muffled by his muzzle. Narrow fingers close around the bench in the van as they jostle toward the drop point. 

"Survive," Spider whispers. 

The Asset nods, approving, and they slip into the night. 

~*~ 

It's a flawless mission. The Asset makes the kill, clean and quick and Spider slips in, slips into their computer system and steals every bit of information their Handler could hope for. 

It's flawless, and after, as they strap him to his Chair, fit the mouth guard to his teeth, he thinks--that was wrong. We did our job too well. 

He can hear Spider screaming, and he feels a flash of guilt, of regret. 

Then he knows pain, pain,  _ pain _ . 

Then he knows nothing. 

~*~ 

There is a boy in the base, a feral boy with sharp bloody teeth and terrifying strength. The guards are afraid. The Handler's voice shakes. 

The Asset listens--to what he says and what he doesn't. 

"Bring him to heel." 

_ Make him comply, or kill him.  _

"He is attached to you." 

_ You knew him.  _

"We are out of patience." 

_ He has killed too many soldiers _ . 

The Asset is given a single blade and he almost snorts at it. The boy is a child, by all accounts. 

They send him into a warren of corridors and empty cells. 

Cobwebs cling to the walls, to the empty doorways, cocoon the rooms, and they tug at something in the Asset. He shakes his head, and slips further into the Spider's nest. 

He doesn't have long to wait. The webs whip out of the yawning darkness, pin him to the wall and the Asset bares his teeth, furious, and--the Spider materializes out of nothing. 

He's thin. Too thin. Dark circles gather under his eyes, and his fingers tremble and his voice cracks, young and high and shaking. "Asset?" 

The Asset tilts his head, and says, for no reason he can say, "What is the mission, Spider?" 

Tears well in the boy's eyes. "Survive." 

He moves, rips the web holding the Asset still, and collapses into his arms, sobbing. 

The Asset holds him, a soft frown on his lips and he thinks--Hydra will kill him. For this, for being weak. They will kill him. 

He closes his eyes and holds the boy close and hums, a soft tune he doesn't know, as the boy cries, silently, against his chest.

~*~ 

"Do you know me?" Spider asks. His voice is strange, empty, sad. It makes a frown twist the Asset's lips down. 

"You are the Spider. Hydra's favorite assassin.” 

Something flickers in the boy's eyes, something like despair. "You promised." 

The Asset tilts his head, curious. "What did I promise?" 

"You promised you would always come back," Spider whispers, like a secret. It is. They would be killed, for this kind of attachment. 

The Asset studies him. "Is that why you killed the guards? Your handler? So they would bring me to you." 

A pretty flush crawls over pale cheeks and the Asset almost purrs in satisfaction. His boy is  _ clever _ . 

" _хитрый паук,_ " he murmurs, approvingly. 

"It doesn't matter," Spider says, despite the pleased smile he tilts toward the Asset. "They'll still take you and put you in the Chair." 

"I don't forget to obey," he says. "When they wipe me. I never forget to obey." 

Spider stares at him, and there's shock and fear and something like hope in his bright bright eyes. 

"You only need the right trigger,  _ возлюбленная _ ." 

~*~ 

They sleep there, in the Spider's webs and each other's arms, and while the boy sleeps sprawled against his chest, he thinks-- _ I would kill to keep this.  _

He thinks- _ -I would kill to make him safe. _

~*~ 

There was another--a tiny blond with fury in his eyes--that he protected, once. But he's distant, all but forgotten, and Spider is small and neat, and clinging like a limpet. He's the bright spot of warmth in the cold dark and he holds him close and dismisses dusty memories. They don't  _ matter _ . 

~*~ 

It should hurt. It  _ has  _ to hurt. His words  _ always _ hurt.

Spider looks at him, like he knows that, chewing on his lip, and the Asset says, “Quickly,  _ маленький паук _ . They will come for us soon.” 

He webs the Asset’s hands, metal and flesh, perches himself on the Asset’s lap and whispers, and his knife is digging, digging,  _ digging. _

A boy. 

_ Паук. _

Cold feet pressed against skin, and chocolate brown eyes peering at him, trusting. 

_ Паук.  _

Tiny bullet holes, and a body scampering across the ceiling and a high pitched noise that doesn’t belong in hell--laughter. A child’s laughter.

_ Паук.  _

A stolen song, hummed half forgotten in the dark. A hand, wrapped tight around his own, uncaring of the metal plates shifting under his hand. 

_ Паук.  _

A promise. “We’ll be free.” 

_ Паук.  _

A vow. “

_ Паук.  _

A mission. “We survive.” 

_ Паук.  _

He bleeds and his screams are bitten into the Spider’s pale shoulder, and his eyes tremble and fill and spill over with tears and the Asset screams, and screams and screams, and bleeds, until the world is washed red and filled up with a boy he cannot possibly forget. 

_ Паук.  _

~*~ 

He listens. 

The guards clean him, an icy spray that makes goosebumps gather on his skin, makes him long for the warmth of the Spider's warren and webs. They scrub him with soap and bleach and dress him in his tac gear, lay his weapons out for him. 

"The Spider is ready." 

The Handler is almost vibrating with excitement, and the Asset's eyes track him. "He will go out alone. It's a simple mission--intel and assassination." He turns and points at the Asset. "You will provide surveillance and backup. You will not interfere." 

He waits but the addendum never comes, and it makes him shiver. 

The Spider is being tested--and if he fails, he will die. 

The Asset blinks, "Ready to comply." 

~*~ 

The mission is simple. 

They all are. 

He sits on a roof and watches through the scope on his gun, the guard on his left forgotten. Spider is scaling the wall, his dark form almost undetectable against the building, lost in the shadows. Glass glints in the moonlight and Spider slides into the building, out of sight. The Asset's finger, on the trigger of his rifle, twitches, anxious. 

It's simple. 

And he watches, waits, tracks his Spider through the building, chasing his heat signature until the guard says, "Mission complete." 

Spider slips out of the building into the shadows, and the Asset folds away his rifle, and breathes for the first time all night. 

~*~ 

They take him, before they reach the base, strip him of his weapons and his gear and shove him in the Chair and he can hear the Spider screaming, can smell blood in the air, and he bites down on the mouth guard and holds tight to the word spiraling in his mind, and let's the pain wipe everything away. 

~*~ 

"He is unmanageable," his Handler growls. 

The Asset aches. He is still shivering from the icy cold of cryo, stomach still churning from the brain melting words spat at him, trembling where he stands at attention while his Handler paces in front of him. 

"Hydra does not need a feral dog," he snarls. "Bring him to heel, or we'll wipe him." 

They put him in a room with a thin naked boy with sharp, cold eyes and red soaked hands. Four bodies lay between him and the boh. The gear sits nearby. "You have a mission," the Asset says, quietly, and the boy blinks. 

Blinks. 

_ Warm brown eyes staring up hopeful in the dark.  _

_ Cold brown eyes staring suspicious across the room.  _

"Soldat?" 

"You have a mission," the Asset repeats. 

"Will you comply?" 

The boy stares at him, before his gaze darts around the room, and he stiffens. He comes closer. "Only you?" 

The boy wants a Handler. The boy wants  _ him _ as a Handler. It is almost enough to make the Asset reach out and snap his scrawny neck. 

_ Cold feet against his shin and a soft body tucked against him.  _

He reaches for the boy's gear, and kits him out, dresses him with careful, practiced touches. Until all the pale skin is carefully hidden away behind protective black gear, until he has knives and grenades and guns and poison tucked into sheathes and pockets and holsters, until his is a weapon, and the boy -- _ brown eyes, soft breath against his throat, a promise just out of reach _ \--is gone. 

Then, the boy steps close, close, and breathes.  _ Паук.  _

The Asset smiles. 

~*~ 

Spider sits in his lap, wraps them in silky strong webs, and listens to the quiet songs the Asset sings to him. 

He doesn't speak. He doesn't talk of his mother or the years between them or the blood that coats their hands. He leans into the Asset and he doesn't tremble, doesn't cry, doesn't shake. 

His Spider grew strong, grew unbreakable. 

It hurts, a sharp blade to the gut. He never wanted this for his boy, his bright beautiful boy with his impossibly hopeful dreams. 

He holds his spider close and whispers, "We'll be free. One day, we'll be free and happy." 

Spider tilts his head and stares at the Asset and says, wonderingly, "You believe that." 

His grip tightens and he nods, once. "I will kill them all, to make you free, sweetheart." 

~*~ 

Her name is Natalia. 

She is bright and beautiful and watches him the same way his spider does, watches with angry hungry eyes that demand he remembers something he knows he has forgotten.

She glares at the guards and watches, a quiet sort of longing in her eyes at Spider standing too close to him. 

“You will train him, the way he once trained you.” 

Natalia dips her head in acknowledgement, and the handler’s gaze flicks to the Asset. 

“You will ensure he is not damaged.” 

He doesn’t smile. Weapons do not smile. He does nothing at all, and the Handler grunts, before vanishing.

~*~ 

Her name is Natalia and also, Widow. He watches her dance, sleek and deadly, with his Spider, watches her teach him to twist and evade and bend, and his mouth is dry. She plays her knives like they are part of her body, extensions of her hand, as supple as silk, as deadly as the spider she takes her name from. 

She is a good teacher. 

She will keep his boy smart and taught the best skills, the ones that he cannot always teach. He nods, quiet approval and watches them. 

~*~ 

“You love him,” Widow says, softly. Spider is sprawled across his chest, limbs soft the way he only is in sleep, defenseless, trusting the Asset to protect him. 

He pets the boy’s hair, soft and curling and nods. 

He remembers, sometimes, a sleeping toddler, a child with tear stained cheeks, a boy trusting him and whispering promises, a young man who fought with him and trusted him, whose hands were stained the same red for the same of their masters. 

“You loved me, once,” she whispers and it feels almost like an accusation, like a benediction. 

He stares at her, helpless and she smiles at him, her lips tight and bloodless. 

“I’m leaving,” she says. 

He thinks of the mission, of the vow he swore. 

“Will you help him?” 

She watches them for a long time, her eyes bright and curious and cold all at once. 

“Yes,” she says. “I will come back for you.” 

~*~ 

It isn’t a plan. 

It’s half of a thought, a whispered promise, a clung to hope that makes his hands steady when the Spider sits in his arms, bleeding, dazed with a concussion, when ice wraps around him and drags him away from his boy. 

They don’t see Natalia again, and he hears whispers, that the Widow crept away, bit the hand that fed her and found a new master. 

He stares into nothing and cares for the Spider who will permit no other’s touch, and clings to half a hope, and prays to a god he doesn’t believe in that wherever Natalia spun her web, she hasn’t forgotten them. 

~*~ 

They wipe Spider three years after Natalia’s defection. He goes into the chair screaming, and fighting, kills three guards before they bring him down and then his screams are all of agony instead of fear, and he screams until it gives way to silent agony, and when he looks at the Asset, there is nothing but emptiness. 

The Soldier kills four guards and two Handlers and they drag him from his blank slate boy, throw him on in the cryo tube, and he fights it, fights until he is still and wrapped in cold and ice, and his scream is frozen on the air. 

~*~ 

The Handlers are displeased. 

There are fewer guards than he’s ever seen and there is blood, fresh and bright, on the ground and someone is keening, a high hurt noise. 

“He could kill the Asset,” a guard mutters. 

“We will chance it. The Spider must be brought to heel.” 

He blinks at the flood of memories at that word. At  _ Паук.  _ Breathes through the influx of memories and commands, and it takes a moment, to reply when the Handler snarls his orders. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter. The orders are exactly what he wants. 

He steps past them, and goes to his Spider. 

~*~ 

They wipe him. 

They wipe the Spider. 

But they do not separate them, not after that disastrous attempt that left over twenty dead and the Spider non-compliant for three years. 

The Asset obeys, complies without complaint. 

The Spider fights them, tooth and nail and spitting fury, and only ever falters when they take the Asset and  _ hurt _ him. 

~*~ 

It makes them weak, he thinks, sometimes. Hydra knows how to hurt them. 

It makes them strong, he thinks, sometimes. This thing between them could never make them anything but strong. 

~*~ 

There is a promise, given by the Widow and a vow, that he whispers into the Spider’s hair, and he thinks one will make the other true but the years slip past and neither come true. 

~*~ 

They shoot a scientist, and the woman guarding him, and Spider pauses, scuttling away, head tilted toward the ragged breathing. The Asset pauses, watching him, and Spider says, “She’s--she’s calling us.” 

The Asset’s fingers tighten on the Spider’s shoulder, grounding him, reassuring himself, and Spider whines. He staggers back a step, and then--

“Who is Natalia?” 

~*~ 

There was a room and red touched widow and a boy with silken curls and they danced, a deadly beautiful ballet and the Asset watched, guarded them and watched them dance, a hot flicker of pride in his belly. 

There was a whispered dream and a vow made in the darkness and a promise sworn in the cold, and a girl who ran. 

He clenches his hand on Spider’s shoulder and the boy,  _ his _ boy looks at him, beseeching and hopeful and he nods. 

~*~ 

The mission is complete. The Widow is bleeding on the pavement, and her scientist is dead, and the Asset lifts her into the car and Spider scrambles in after her. 

They run. 

~*~ 

She says her name is Natasha. 

She says they have names. 

She says they are safe. 

She says all this still bleeding from his bullet, white faced and trembling on a bed while a blonde man stitches her together and glares at them. 

She says it and he doesn’t believe her, but he wants to. They are given a room, a large thing with a plush white bed and a thin narrow closet, and Spider drags a blanket there, pushes him down into their nest and tucks himself into the curve of the Asset’s body. 

They don’t speak. 

They don’t sleep. 

But listening to his boy’s heartbeat and the quiet hum of the city beyond the walls of their hidden haven--he dares to  _ hope.  _

~*~ 

Natasha says they are free now. She passes a file across the table and Spider shudders, weeps, as he reads the file.

“My name is Peter,” he whispers into the Asset’s throat, later. 

Peter Parker. A two year old who went missing after his parent’s murder, twenty years ago. 

He cannot reconcile the sweet boy in those pictures with the Spider in his arms, and yet he knows, deep in his bones, that it’s true. 

That this is his Spider. 

~*~ 

“Your name is James Barnes,” Tasha says. 

“You were friends with Steve Rogers.” 

“Hydra held you for over seventy years.” 

He listens to her talk, watches the big tears on Peter’s face, and wonders if she’s talking about someone else. 

~*~ 

Natasha takes them to America. To a little apartment a block from hers, where they can wrap around each other.

It isn’t easy. 

Hydra is furious, and Natasha tells them, sometimes, about the many teams sent to recapture their Spider and the Wolf of Hydra. 

Peter wakes screaming and James holds him, tight enough that bruises bloom against pale skin. 

James hears Russian while they walk in the park near their home and almost guts a business man before Peter drags him away. 

They carry too many weapons and cling too tight to each other. 

But they are free. 

There are books on their table and Peter is flush and healthy and his hands smell of strawberries and not blood. James plays with knives and reads his books and maps his boy’s healthy curves and the flush that follows his fingertips. 

Peter kisses him, four months after they escape Hydra, and Natasha laughs, low and pleased and James thinks,  _ oh.  _

He kisses Peter, careful and chaste and gentle in their nest of webs and blankets and his smile tastes like sunshine and sugar. 

There are days where they curl in Peter’s webs and cling to each other, trembling. 

There are days where they lie twisted together in their bed and Peter whispers dreams and promises in his ear. 

There are days good and bad and perfect. 

The Asset thinks that's what life is. 

~*~ 

He whispers, sometimes, his promise. His vow. While his boy sleeps, and James watches the shadows for the monsters he knows live in the dark, he whispers his vow, anew. 

“I will live for you.” 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Peter is kidnapped and held by Hydra, trained by Bucky. There is a hint of slash that begins with 'Natasha takes them to America.'  
> Standard violence and torture inherent to Hydra.


End file.
